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Canada considers donating flu drug stockpile

By HELEN BRANSWELL




(CP) - Canada will endorse and promote a plan to have wealthy nations contribute 10 per cent of their flu drug stockpiles and later vaccines to help less affluent countries weather an influenza pandemic, Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said Wednesday.

Dosanjh said the idea will be on the table next week when health ministers from about 20 developed and developing countries meet in Ottawa to advance global preparations for a flu pandemic.

"That is a proposal that is being floated that is going to be before the international health conference," the health minister said in an interview.

Dosanjh said he heard of the idea from Julio Frenck, Mexico's health minister.

"I wholeheartedly endorse it and we will be promoting it.... And we will do it."

Dosanjh said the idea of giving away 10 per cent of Canada's stockpile of antiviral drugs will have to receive cabinet approval. But he said he didn't feel that would be difficult to get.

"I'm sure our cabinet would approve it. Because we are in a sense one of the leaders in the world on these kinds of issues. People look to Canada."

He was less clear on whether the idea would fly with the other countries at the table who are in a position to donate.

"We may not come to a consensus on this at this meeting," he said. "But this is the beginning of a discussion. We need to have it."

The idea of redistributing stockpiles of precious antiviral drugs was floated last month by Dr. David Nabarro, the public health veteran who is co-ordinating the UN system's response to a pandemic.

"We're going to have very little stuff and it's already stuck away in stockpiles ... that people will protect with their lives. And yet we're going to have to find some way to ration these things so that they are given to the folk who need them the most," Nabarro said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

The federal, provincial and territorial governments currently have a combined total of 22.5 million pills of the drug Tamiflu in pandemic stockpiles.

Under the current treatment regime, that is enough drug to treat about 2.5 million Canadians. Experts believe, though, that if the H5N1 avian influenza strain triggers a pandemic higher doses of the drug might be needed.

Other countries - notably Australia and Britain - have larger supplies or have ordered larger amounts of the drug.

Tamiflu, made by Hoffman-La Roche, is moderately expensive, costing around $60 a treatment course in Canada.

While that price tag puts it well beyond the means of many developing countries, cost isn't the only limitation.

Roche is the sole company that makes the drug, one of only two believed to be effective against all potential pandemic flu strains. At the current time it is capable of making only 10s of millions of treatment courses a year - it refuses to be more precise about capacity. Countries around the globe are clamouring for a share of that output.

The second drug, Relenza (made by GlaxoSmithKline) is made in even smaller quantities than Tamiflu, though GSK has hinted it may significantly step up production to meet heightened demand.

Dosanjh said Canada is looking at purchasing some Relenza for its stockpile. And he insisted that if his advisers feel the country needs to add more antivirals to stockpiles, Canada will do so.

"If the experts believe we need more, we will get more. There is absolutely no question."

But Dosanjh made a point of underscoring that while pandemic preparations are crucial, no government will be able to fully insulate its people from the economic impact and human health toll of a pandemic.

"I believe that you've got to be candid with people," he said.

"People have got to know that fear is not only in their minds. It's also in my mind and in our minds, collectively. And that is why we're . . . preparing."